12 ms·

Punchd - A Loyalty Program (from Google)

103 points by jedc 15y ago

jedc 15y ago
According to the app description in Android market: "Currently only working at specific locations: San Francisco, Portland, Austin, San Luis Obispo, Fullerton and San Diego."
shoota 15y ago
This seems to compete with some of the benefits of using Google Wallet. Although, I suppose a Google Wallet based loyalty card requires a lot larger investment by the business. Also since a QR code is just an image and not something more complicated like an NFC tag what's to stop someone from taking a picture of it with their phone and scanning it multiple times at home? edit:* well looking at their FAQ they say this: Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure. That still has to trust the smartphone to report the correct GPS and velocity, additionally I think faking the statistical variation might not be too difficult.
- jedc 15y ago
  I would guess that this might eventually tie into Google Wallet in some way. Perhaps it's essentially the loyalty card part of Wallet just re-packaged until more businesses deploy the new machines at registers?
- donw 15y ago
  Faking the variation shouldn't be hard at all, but how many people would be willing to take the time and risk being prosecuted for fraud in exchange for some free coffee? Even if 10% of customers abuse the system, it's still a net win for the business. They'll have to cough up some free coffees or sandwiches, but the fraudster is still in the shop and likely to pay for incidentals that go with the promotion; e.g., a drink or chips to go with their sandwich, croissant with the coffee, etc.
- steelaz 15y ago
  I think printing QR code on a receipt would solve fraud issue, but again, requires additional investment.
adamtmca 15y ago
Applied to yc with this idea couple years ago, cool to see it in production. Sharing a loyalty card with a group of friends (i.e. when anyone makes a purchase everyone gets a stamp) was one of the social features we were excited about, I'm interested to see what they come up with.
- dannyr 15y ago
  Five Stars Card (http://www.fivestarscard.com/ http://www.fivestarscard.com/) got funded by YC this year. I see the Five Stars Card badge everywhere here in the Bay Area.
- bmelton 15y ago
  Punchd has been around awhile. I've still got the original app on my phone from before they were acquired by Google. They went through the classic "Oh, we got bought by Google so we're closing doors for an ambiguous amount of time before maybe reappearing again later" phase that it seems most Google acquisitions go through. In that time, the Five Stars guys have really gotten traction. I don't know if that paves the way for Punchd or not, but I thought it was a great idea before Google bought it, and apparently, so did Google.
  - ChrisArchitect 15y ago
    there's so many of these google acquisitions doing the 'disappear' thing that when they do resurface we've almost all forgotten and all is new again. haha. Maybe that's the point.
coderdude 15y ago
Did anyone notice this little Apple logo yelling at the Android logo at the bottom of the page? http://getpunchd.com/img/june/idiots.png http://getpunchd.com/img/june/idiots.png (http://i.imgur.com/sy7QX.png http://i.imgur.com/sy7QX.png) It's called idiots.png. Is this illustrating that it's stupid to bicker about your mobile platform? Or is it calling Apple users idiots (it does look like the Apple character is yelling about something and Android guy just looks like he's thinking "wtf?"). Oh the possible Internet drama.
- nessus42 15y ago
  It's criticizing Apple for suing everything Android.
- ChrisArchitect 15y ago
  oh wow, after skimming the page and getting to the bottom, totally noticed that pic! craziness. drama indeed. haha. Good on them.
- troymc 15y ago
  The apple isn't yelling. It's the Apple logo, which has a bite out of the side.
mrtron 15y ago
Don't underestimate how huge this is. It is directly competing with where daily deal sites are trying to evolve to, like Groupon's Rewards. http://www.groupon.com/merchants/rewards http://www.groupon.com/merchants/rewards Most Groupon clones are trying to quickly roll out reward systems through credit card processing. Google's solution seems more eloquent, with more opportunities for social and advertising directly to a user with location services, mobile alerts, etc. Basically you could fill a 2011 trendy startup bingo card with this product.
knodi 15y ago
Can't I just take a picture of the QR code and scan it as many time as I want, without purchasing anything?
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  That is what I was thinking. It is as easy as opening the phone app and taking a photo. Maybe the vendor prints a new QR code every day?
- fomojola 15y ago
  From their page: "Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure." Velocity analysis. Sounds complicated. Wonder how well it actually works.
  - buro9 15y ago
    Hard to know what to say here, but we (Yell Labs) have built what appears to be the exact same solution to this problem that punchd have. As far as I can tell we started at around the same time but from London, UK. And we have our own patent applications (that I was unhappy about submitting because I don't agree that they were non-obvious, and that punchd did the same thing elsewhere at the same time is evidence of that). Anyhow... how do we, with what appears to be exactly the same solution, handle security? Signals, lots of them. What sensors does the phone have? Great, grab it all and start comparing for deviations and against thresholds. When you have enough data start machine learning against it. With velocity, look at the X,Y,Z of the gravity sensor and see if the numbers since the last QR scan indicate that you're moving at beyond a certain G... clearly scanning a QR code shouldn't require speed. Then you've got things like, if you scanned in London, could you scan in Birmingham 5 minutes later? What's the likely speed between places. Did a scan happen at 2am? The rest of the data suggests that they're closed at that hour. And more subtle ones: If all of the compass readings for a specific branch point within a 15 degree range... you can actually know that they have a single cashpoint and the customer is on the South side of it. As for whether they work, they're very effective against obviously fake stuff, and then together with other signals create a reasonably high confidence of finding the extremely doubtful stuff. You really want to handle this delicately as the thing you don't want to do is make it really uncomfortable for the small business owner if he suspects someone of fraud... so you want to catch them and deduct the fake points before they enter the shop, but confidently enough that you don't hurt a genuine customer at all. It's really easy to sit down and create a whole load of tests against a new scan just by looking at a wealth of data from old scans. I hope they haven't patented that aspect, it's pretty damn obvious.
ashleyw 15y ago
It's weird seeing a Google product with "SaaS pricing": http://getpunchd.com/pricing http://getpunchd.com/pricing
ben1040 15y ago
A frozen yogurt shop I used to visit a lot started using Punchd back in June. The app is cute, but I'd rather just have a paper card. After the transaction, the clerk has to pull out a QR code card to let you scan. The app on your phone won't try scanning until it can get a location to verify you're actually there. Maybe a quarter of the time my phone's flaky GPS has trouble getting a location, so the clerk ends up standing there with the card out while I hold my phone out. Then once it scans, it takes a moment or two for the app to talk to the backend and register the punch. Even if my phone had perfect GPS it'd still be a little too much effort. The yogurt shop eventually wound up getting paper punch cards in addition to Punchd, and I started using those instead of the mobile app. It takes less time for them to just take the card and stamp it than it does to do the whole Punchd dance. With Google's oomph behind this, I could see them start using NFC tags, which might speed up the process. But until then I've quit using this as a customer.
- dpark 15y ago
  So the punch is based on scanning a QR code? Unless I'm misunderstanding, this is really broken. It sounds like someone could write a counterfeit app that scans the QR code, records the current location, and resubmits every minute, recording tons of punches that never actually happened. They should do it the other way. Your phone should pop up a unque code for the cashier to scan. I guess that makes the barrier to entry higher, though. Maybe change the QR code daily at least (for businesses concerned about fraud, anyway).
  - ben1040 15y ago
    So the punch is based on scanning a QR code? That's correct. The business has a card with a QR code printed on it that you scan to get a "punch." This is part of the value proposition for the merchants, I guess - they don't need a phone or device of their own at all, they just need to print a few things. The tradeoff is maybe the system is easier to game for the tiny percent that is technically inclined enough to try it.
    - datums 15y ago
gormlai 15y ago
I have worked on a competing product called OneGratis ( http://www.onegratis.com http://www.onegratis.com ). It works in a similar fashion to Punchd, except I think we might have been out a little bit earlier and the end-user is not required to create an account. Regarding the comments on cheating, I think one of the best ways to combat that, is to build in functionality to disable phones online. As users are forced to be online when they redeem their loyalty card, this also means they are forced to synchronize their app with the server. This approach tolerates a little bit of cheating, but also makes sure we can lock out a user, if the stats indicate the person is cheating.
oldstrangers 15y ago
I'm digging this focused, simple and elegant approach from Google. This product isn't overreaching, it doesn't try to do 1,000 things, it looks like it could've been a startup that just launched. It even has its own domain! I really like the direction Google is heading under Page. Focus and simplicity with real solutions.
aresant 15y ago
Punchd raised ~$50k at "500 Startups" demo day, then three months later was bought by Google (July of this year). That is called how damn fast it is to get noticed and bought if you execute brilliantly in a big market. And it only looks better now than it did. It's a beautiful, elegant way of digitizing a marketing tactic that everybody already knows and understands. The little paper signs "Buy _____ and get _____" are the perfect visualization of how well thought out this product is - nice job.
- chexton 15y ago
  I think there is really something in this. It does look like a very streamlined product with nice touches...but they must have executed very effectively. From what I've read there are a bunch of startups in this space, doing very similar things. Even here in Australia there are a few I can think of that are doing pretty well. As none have yet been bought by Google for $50m, I'd be curious to know more about the kind of traction Punchd had prior to the acquisition (how many users did they have, were the pulling in revenue) - it's always interesting to know more about how a startup with this kind of success executed! Also, hats off to the Punchd guys...I remember the thread about the acquisition and there was a lot of praise for the founders themselves, as people and as founders.
- marcamillion 15y ago
  Ahh...that makes sense...was wondering how comes Google was charging. Was about to say...wow...I think that would be the first time I have ever seen Google charge explicitly for a SaaS service like this. Aside from Ad-powered things of course.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ticktock 15y ago
A Brand New POS-X XPC-500 w/180x180 DPI printer is ~$1500 - with XP - google should create a free OS to replace XP and run the whole POS inside and out. What are they waiting for? If this 'app' never needs to synchronize with a server to 'process' my rewards, i'm gunna be getting everything for free from now on. GPS triangulation? (yea - i was on the moon, wtf?) Velocity analysis? (timestamp += TOO_FAST + 1) Statistical Variation? (yea - i go here 20x/day, wtf?) // good luck with that google while(1) GetMeFreeShit(qr_code, bus_gps, timestamp) the hack will be opensourced in a week.
callmeed 15y ago
So excited Google is keeping Punchd going. SLO and Cal Poly represent!
- cloudwalking 15y ago
  Have you used Punchd in SLO? It's all over!
  - callmeed 15y ago
    Yeah, my office is downtown and we have our normal lunch rotation. Petra is the main place I've used it.
akx 15y ago
The idea's nice (though it'll take approximately forever for anything akin to this to land here in Finland). I was annoyed by the quality of the copy here though... no one ran it through any sort of spell check? http://getpunchd.com/img/june/tour/moneymoney.jpg http://getpunchd.com/img/june/tour/moneymoney.jpg
vetler 15y ago
Huh .. I had an idea like this a few weeks ago when I saw a video about paying with your phone using NFC. However, I usually think my ideas to death, so I ended up dismissing it. Probably why I'm not an entrepreneur. My problem was perhaps that I considered it in the scale of small coffee shops, and found the hassle of them getting the infrastructure and the increased overhead of printing and scanning codes to be too big of a problem for adoption. However, for larger chains, this seems like an excellent solution. Getting the infrastructure in place won't be such a big problem if you roll this out across, let's say McDonalds. You could have a McDonald's-specific app and tie it in with Facebook and Twitter and Gowalla whatnot. But for smaller shops, there might not be such a big advantage. They might not even need this. But I'll happily be proven wrong.
clowder 15y ago
Looks like a fun product! Anyone know of any UK based businesses using it?
i386 15y ago
Yet another Google launch that is US only (Well at least not available in Australia). Google - people outside the US exist and we want to use your stuff!
jrubinovitz 15y ago
I find it interesting how on the pricing page one of the selling points is "No advanced technology No technology at the Point of Sale. Set-up is simple, print once and your loyalty program is ready to go. Sign-up completely online in 10 minutes or less." While this a turn off for me, I'm a technology person, so I guess for some markets simple is better. Other than that, I love the marketing here. It feels very simple, clean, and honest, like the product (hopefully, I haven't tried it).
ryanschmidt 15y ago
I find it interesting that the promo video says there's "no software to download" yet you need the mobile app to use it. Accidental slip up?

103 points by jedc 15y ago

jedc 15y ago

According to the app description in Android market: "Currently only working at specific locations: San Francisco, Portland, Austin, San Luis Obispo, Fullerton and San Diego."

shoota 15y ago

This seems to compete with some of the benefits of using Google Wallet. Although, I suppose a Google Wallet based loyalty card requires a lot larger investment by the business. Also since a QR code is just an image and not something more complicated like an NFC tag what's to stop someone from taking a picture of it with their phone and scanning it multiple times at home? edit:* well looking at their FAQ they say this: Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure. That still has to trust the smartphone to report the correct GPS and velocity, additionally I think faking the statistical variation might not be too difficult.

jedc 15y ago
I would guess that this might eventually tie into Google Wallet in some way. Perhaps it's essentially the loyalty card part of Wallet just re-packaged until more businesses deploy the new machines at registers?
donw 15y ago
Faking the variation shouldn't be hard at all, but how many people would be willing to take the time and risk being prosecuted for fraud in exchange for some free coffee? Even if 10% of customers abuse the system, it's still a net win for the business. They'll have to cough up some free coffees or sandwiches, but the fraudster is still in the shop and likely to pay for incidentals that go with the promotion; e.g., a drink or chips to go with their sandwich, croissant with the coffee, etc.
steelaz 15y ago
I think printing QR code on a receipt would solve fraud issue, but again, requires additional investment.

adamtmca 15y ago

Applied to yc with this idea couple years ago, cool to see it in production. Sharing a loyalty card with a group of friends (i.e. when anyone makes a purchase everyone gets a stamp) was one of the social features we were excited about, I'm interested to see what they come up with.

dannyr 15y ago
Five Stars Card (http://www.fivestarscard.com/ http://www.fivestarscard.com/) got funded by YC this year. I see the Five Stars Card badge everywhere here in the Bay Area.
bmelton 15y ago
Punchd has been around awhile. I've still got the original app on my phone from before they were acquired by Google. They went through the classic "Oh, we got bought by Google so we're closing doors for an ambiguous amount of time before maybe reappearing again later" phase that it seems most Google acquisitions go through. In that time, the Five Stars guys have really gotten traction. I don't know if that paves the way for Punchd or not, but I thought it was a great idea before Google bought it, and apparently, so did Google.
- ChrisArchitect 15y ago
  there's so many of these google acquisitions doing the 'disappear' thing that when they do resurface we've almost all forgotten and all is new again. haha. Maybe that's the point.

coderdude 15y ago

Did anyone notice this little Apple logo yelling at the Android logo at the bottom of the page? http://getpunchd.com/img/june/idiots.png http://getpunchd.com/img/june/idiots.png (http://i.imgur.com/sy7QX.png http://i.imgur.com/sy7QX.png) It's called idiots.png. Is this illustrating that it's stupid to bicker about your mobile platform? Or is it calling Apple users idiots (it does look like the Apple character is yelling about something and Android guy just looks like he's thinking "wtf?"). Oh the possible Internet drama.

nessus42 15y ago
It's criticizing Apple for suing everything Android.
ChrisArchitect 15y ago
oh wow, after skimming the page and getting to the bottom, totally noticed that pic! craziness. drama indeed. haha. Good on them.
troymc 15y ago
The apple isn't yelling. It's the Apple logo, which has a bite out of the side.

mrtron 15y ago

Don't underestimate how huge this is. It is directly competing with where daily deal sites are trying to evolve to, like Groupon's Rewards. http://www.groupon.com/merchants/rewards http://www.groupon.com/merchants/rewards Most Groupon clones are trying to quickly roll out reward systems through credit card processing. Google's solution seems more eloquent, with more opportunities for social and advertising directly to a user with location services, mobile alerts, etc. Basically you could fill a 2011 trendy startup bingo card with this product.

knodi 15y ago

Can't I just take a picture of the QR code and scan it as many time as I want, without purchasing anything?

jcampbell1 15y ago
That is what I was thinking. It is as easy as opening the phone app and taking a photo. Maybe the vendor prints a new QR code every day?
fomojola 15y ago
From their page: "Patent-pending technology guarantees the integrity of your loyalty program. GPS triangulation, velocity analysis, and statistical variation keep things secure." Velocity analysis. Sounds complicated. Wonder how well it actually works.
- buro9 15y ago
  Hard to know what to say here, but we (Yell Labs) have built what appears to be the exact same solution to this problem that punchd have. As far as I can tell we started at around the same time but from London, UK. And we have our own patent applications (that I was unhappy about submitting because I don't agree that they were non-obvious, and that punchd did the same thing elsewhere at the same time is evidence of that). Anyhow... how do we, with what appears to be exactly the same solution, handle security? Signals, lots of them. What sensors does the phone have? Great, grab it all and start comparing for deviations and against thresholds. When you have enough data start machine learning against it. With velocity, look at the X,Y,Z of the gravity sensor and see if the numbers since the last QR scan indicate that you're moving at beyond a certain G... clearly scanning a QR code shouldn't require speed. Then you've got things like, if you scanned in London, could you scan in Birmingham 5 minutes later? What's the likely speed between places. Did a scan happen at 2am? The rest of the data suggests that they're closed at that hour. And more subtle ones: If all of the compass readings for a specific branch point within a 15 degree range... you can actually know that they have a single cashpoint and the customer is on the South side of it. As for whether they work, they're very effective against obviously fake stuff, and then together with other signals create a reasonably high confidence of finding the extremely doubtful stuff. You really want to handle this delicately as the thing you don't want to do is make it really uncomfortable for the small business owner if he suspects someone of fraud... so you want to catch them and deduct the fake points before they enter the shop, but confidently enough that you don't hurt a genuine customer at all. It's really easy to sit down and create a whole load of tests against a new scan just by looking at a wealth of data from old scans. I hope they haven't patented that aspect, it's pretty damn obvious.

ashleyw 15y ago

It's weird seeing a Google product with "SaaS pricing": http://getpunchd.com/pricing http://getpunchd.com/pricing

ben1040 15y ago

A frozen yogurt shop I used to visit a lot started using Punchd back in June. The app is cute, but I'd rather just have a paper card. After the transaction, the clerk has to pull out a QR code card to let you scan. The app on your phone won't try scanning until it can get a location to verify you're actually there. Maybe a quarter of the time my phone's flaky GPS has trouble getting a location, so the clerk ends up standing there with the card out while I hold my phone out. Then once it scans, it takes a moment or two for the app to talk to the backend and register the punch. Even if my phone had perfect GPS it'd still be a little too much effort. The yogurt shop eventually wound up getting paper punch cards in addition to Punchd, and I started using those instead of the mobile app. It takes less time for them to just take the card and stamp it than it does to do the whole Punchd dance. With Google's oomph behind this, I could see them start using NFC tags, which might speed up the process. But until then I've quit using this as a customer.

dpark 15y ago
So the punch is based on scanning a QR code? Unless I'm misunderstanding, this is really broken. It sounds like someone could write a counterfeit app that scans the QR code, records the current location, and resubmits every minute, recording tons of punches that never actually happened. They should do it the other way. Your phone should pop up a unque code for the cashier to scan. I guess that makes the barrier to entry higher, though. Maybe change the QR code daily at least (for businesses concerned about fraud, anyway).
- ben1040 15y ago
  So the punch is based on scanning a QR code? That's correct. The business has a card with a QR code printed on it that you scan to get a "punch." This is part of the value proposition for the merchants, I guess - they don't need a phone or device of their own at all, they just need to print a few things. The tradeoff is maybe the system is easier to game for the tiny percent that is technically inclined enough to try it.
  - datums 15y ago

gormlai 15y ago

I have worked on a competing product called OneGratis ( http://www.onegratis.com http://www.onegratis.com ). It works in a similar fashion to Punchd, except I think we might have been out a little bit earlier and the end-user is not required to create an account. Regarding the comments on cheating, I think one of the best ways to combat that, is to build in functionality to disable phones online. As users are forced to be online when they redeem their loyalty card, this also means they are forced to synchronize their app with the server. This approach tolerates a little bit of cheating, but also makes sure we can lock out a user, if the stats indicate the person is cheating.

oldstrangers 15y ago

I'm digging this focused, simple and elegant approach from Google. This product isn't overreaching, it doesn't try to do 1,000 things, it looks like it could've been a startup that just launched. It even has its own domain! I really like the direction Google is heading under Page. Focus and simplicity with real solutions.

aresant 15y ago

Punchd raised ~$50k at "500 Startups" demo day, then three months later was bought by Google (July of this year). That is called how damn fast it is to get noticed and bought if you execute brilliantly in a big market. And it only looks better now than it did. It's a beautiful, elegant way of digitizing a marketing tactic that everybody already knows and understands. The little paper signs "Buy _____ and get _____" are the perfect visualization of how well thought out this product is - nice job.

chexton 15y ago
I think there is really something in this. It does look like a very streamlined product with nice touches...but they must have executed very effectively. From what I've read there are a bunch of startups in this space, doing very similar things. Even here in Australia there are a few I can think of that are doing pretty well. As none have yet been bought by Google for $50m, I'd be curious to know more about the kind of traction Punchd had prior to the acquisition (how many users did they have, were the pulling in revenue) - it's always interesting to know more about how a startup with this kind of success executed! Also, hats off to the Punchd guys...I remember the thread about the acquisition and there was a lot of praise for the founders themselves, as people and as founders.
marcamillion 15y ago
Ahh...that makes sense...was wondering how comes Google was charging. Was about to say...wow...I think that would be the first time I have ever seen Google charge explicitly for a SaaS service like this. Aside from Ad-powered things of course.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ticktock 15y ago

A Brand New POS-X XPC-500 w/180x180 DPI printer is ~$1500 - with XP - google should create a free OS to replace XP and run the whole POS inside and out. What are they waiting for? If this 'app' never needs to synchronize with a server to 'process' my rewards, i'm gunna be getting everything for free from now on. GPS triangulation? (yea - i was on the moon, wtf?) Velocity analysis? (timestamp += TOO_FAST + 1) Statistical Variation? (yea - i go here 20x/day, wtf?) // good luck with that google while(1) GetMeFreeShit(qr_code, bus_gps, timestamp) the hack will be opensourced in a week.

callmeed 15y ago

So excited Google is keeping Punchd going. SLO and Cal Poly represent!

cloudwalking 15y ago
Have you used Punchd in SLO? It's all over!
- callmeed 15y ago
  Yeah, my office is downtown and we have our normal lunch rotation. Petra is the main place I've used it.

akx 15y ago

The idea's nice (though it'll take approximately forever for anything akin to this to land here in Finland). I was annoyed by the quality of the copy here though... no one ran it through any sort of spell check? http://getpunchd.com/img/june/tour/moneymoney.jpg http://getpunchd.com/img/june/tour/moneymoney.jpg

vetler 15y ago

Huh .. I had an idea like this a few weeks ago when I saw a video about paying with your phone using NFC. However, I usually think my ideas to death, so I ended up dismissing it. Probably why I'm not an entrepreneur. My problem was perhaps that I considered it in the scale of small coffee shops, and found the hassle of them getting the infrastructure and the increased overhead of printing and scanning codes to be too big of a problem for adoption. However, for larger chains, this seems like an excellent solution. Getting the infrastructure in place won't be such a big problem if you roll this out across, let's say McDonalds. You could have a McDonald's-specific app and tie it in with Facebook and Twitter and Gowalla whatnot. But for smaller shops, there might not be such a big advantage. They might not even need this. But I'll happily be proven wrong.

clowder 15y ago

Looks like a fun product! Anyone know of any UK based businesses using it?

i386 15y ago

Yet another Google launch that is US only (Well at least not available in Australia). Google - people outside the US exist and we want to use your stuff!

jrubinovitz 15y ago

I find it interesting how on the pricing page one of the selling points is "No advanced technology No technology at the Point of Sale. Set-up is simple, print once and your loyalty program is ready to go. Sign-up completely online in 10 minutes or less." While this a turn off for me, I'm a technology person, so I guess for some markets simple is better. Other than that, I love the marketing here. It feels very simple, clean, and honest, like the product (hopefully, I haven't tried it).

ryanschmidt 15y ago

I find it interesting that the promo video says there's "no software to download" yet you need the mobile app to use it. Accidental slip up?